Perpignan, France: A French court Monday lifted a freeze order on slain Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi's personal plane, following a bitter battle over the luxury aircraft between a Kuwaiti conglomerate and the Libyan government.
Kuwait's Al-Kharafi group had the Airbus A340, seen as a symbol of Gaddafi's extravagance by the rebels who overthrew him, seized amid a near billion-euro debt related to a contract to build a beach resort in Libya.
The plane has been in the southern French city of Perpignan since 2012, soon after Gaddafi's regime fell, where it had been sent for three million euros' worth of maintenance work by Air France -- as yet unpaid.
"It is very satisfying to see the judge has recognised the fact this plane, which belongs to the Libyan state, has immunity from being seized," said Carole Sportes, lawyer for the Libyan side.
Libyan rebel fighters sit at the sitting room of Muammar Gaddafi's private plane at the international airport in Tripoli (Reuters Photo)